Memoirs Of Nicky And Alix

DISCOVER: THE DIARY OF NICHOLAS AND ALEXANDRA There are not many couples in history whose views could reflect the zeitgeist of their time. Included in this rare category of people are the Romanovs, who had been through a lot of hardship but preserved their profound feelings for each other till the end of their lives. As they witnessed incredible events, Nicholas II and Alexandra Fyodorovna managed to depict their thoughts and emotional experiences, and those became a most interesting source of knowledge about the epochal events of the turn of the 20th century. This edition is a unique compilation of letters and diary entries that provides readers with a rare opportunity to see the same events from two different points of view. As you turn over the pages of this book, you will be amazed to discover facets of "masculine" and "feminine" perceptions of life and surprised at their unexpected similarities and paradoxical differences

The dramatic story of Emperor Nicholas II and his wife Alexandra Fyodorovna, the last Tsar and Tsarina of Russia—A penetrating and deeply personal study that gives profound psychological insight into their marriage and how it shaped the events that engulfed them. There are few characters in history about whom opinion has been more divided than the last Tsar of Russia, Nicholas II, and his wife the Empress Alexandra Fyodorovna. On one hand, they are venerated as saints, innocent victims of Bolshevik assassins, and on the other they are impugned as the unwitting harbingers of revolution and imperial collapse, blamed for all the ills that befell the Russian people in the 20th century. Theirs was also a tragic love story; for whatever else can be said of them, there can be no doubt that Alix and Nicky adored one another. Soon after their engagement, Alix wrote in her fiancé's diary: "Ever true and ever loving, faithful, pure and strong as death"—words which met their fulfillment twenty-four years later in a blood-spattered cellar in Ekaterinburg. Through the letters and diaries written by the couple and by those around them, Virginia Rounding presents an intimate, penetrating, and fresh portrayal of these two complex figures and of their passion—their love and their suffering. She explores the nature and possible causes of the Empress's ill health, and examines in depth the enigmatic triangular relationship between Nicky, Alix and their ‘favourite,' Ania Vyrubova, protégée of the infamous Rasputin, extracting the meaning from words left unsaid, from hints and innuendoes.. The story of Alix and Nicky, of their four daughters known collectively as ‘OTMA' and of their hemophiliac little boy Alexei, is endlessly fascinating, and Rounding makes these characters come alive, presenting them in all their human dimensions and expertly leading the reader into their vanished world.

These letters, most of which are published here for the first time, offer an intimate look at some of the most momentous events of the early 1900s, including Russia's participation in World War I and the fall of the Romanov dynasty in the Bolshevik revolution. Among the correspondents are Alexandra's beloved but domineering grandmother, Queen Victoria of England, and Nicholas' cousin, Kaiser Wilhelm of Germany. Most poignant, though, are the letters and diaries of the last Tsar and Tsarina, which stand as eloquent expressions of one of the great love affairs of this century. "A Lifelong Passion begins in 1884 with the couple's first childhood meeting and chronicles their intense courtship and first joyful years of marriage. The Romanovs' happiness was not to last, however, as they were quickly overtaken by the forces of war and revolution. The discovery that their only son and heir Alexei was stricken with hemophilia opened the family to the formidable and perhaps malign influence of the monk Rasputin, whose gory death at the hands of two Grand Dukes is here recounted by one of the murderers. Though unshaken in their love for one another, Nicholas and Alexandra could not hold their country together, and their story ends with a chilling account of their assassination by the Bolshevik revolutionaries.

A “magnificent and intimate” (Harper’s) modern classic of Russian history, the spellbinding story of the love that ended an empire—from the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Peter the Great, The Romanovs, and Catherine the Great “A moving, rich book . . . [This] revealing, densely documented account of the last Romanovs focuses not on the great events . . . but on the royal family and their evil nemesis. . . . The tale is so bizarre, no melodrama is equal to it.”—Newsweek In this commanding book, New York Times bestselling author Robert K. Massie sweeps readers back to the extraordinary world of the Russian empire to tell the story of the Romanovs’ lives: Nicholas’s political naïveté, Alexandra’s obsession with the corrupt mystic Rasputin, and little Alexis’s brave struggle with hemophilia. Against a lavish backdrop of luxury and intrigue, Massie unfolds a powerful drama of passion and history—the story of a doomed empire and the death-marked royals who watched it crumble.

Former Grand Duke Alexander Mikhailovic of Russia presents his memoirs and his reflections on the downfall of the Romanov family in this enlightening account of the final fifty years of the Russian Empire. The author narrates his childhood experiences growing up in the Caucuses and explains how he turned away from his expected role within the army in favour of serving in the navy. He describes his visits to South Africa, America and Europe and we see the headstrong Duke’s love of the outdoors. When his cousin becomes Tsar Nicholas II, Alexander Mikhailovic must play a part in the government and the reader is given an inside perspective of the running of the Russian Empire. His distorted perspective of autocracy is presented unapologetically and his opinions are often hypocritical. His hatred of the liberals who were responsible for the deaths of many of his friends and family members is unsurprising, but is contradicted by his own liberal ideas and rebellion against the Orthodox Church. This volume’s contents include: - Our Friends of December the Fourteenth - A Grand Duke is Born - My First War - An Emperor in Love - A Grand Duke Comes of Age - My Relatives - Millions That Were - Nicholas II Read & Co. History is proud to have republished this unique account of the last fifty years of the Russian empire and the events leading up to the fated February Revolution. Not to be missed by those with an interest in Russian history and the Romanov dynasty.

Taking advantage of material unavailable until the fall of the Soviet Union, Erickson portrays Alexandra's story as a closely observed, enthrallingly documented, progressive psychological retreat from reality. The lives of the Romanovs were full of color and drama, but the personal life of Alexandra has remained enigmatic. Under Erickson's masterful scrutiny the full dimensions of the Empresses' singular psychology are revealed: her childhood bereavement, her long struggle to attain her romantic goal of marriage to Nicholas, the anguish of her pathological shyness, her struggles with her in-laws, her false pregnancy, her increasing eccentricities and loss of self as she became more preoccupied with matters of faith, and her increasing dependence on a series of occult mentors, the most notorious of whom was Rasputin. With meticulous care, long practiced skill, and generous imagination, Erickson crafts a character who lives and breathes.

Russian playwright and historian Radzinsky mines sources never before available to create a fascinating portrait of the monarch, and a minute-by-minute account of his terrifying last days.

Alexander lived in Paris when he wrote his memoirs, Once a Grand Duke, which were first published in 1932. It is a rich source of dynastical and court life in Imperial Russia’s last half century, and Alexander also describes time spent as guest of the future Abyssinian Emperor Ras Tafari. “The history of the last fifty turbulent years of the Russian Empire provides only a background, but is not the subject of this book. “In compiling this record of a grand duke’s progress I relied on memory only, all my letters, diaries and other documents having been partly burned by me and partly confiscated by the revolutionaries during the years of 1917 and 1918 in the Crimea.”—Alexander, Grand Duke of Russia, Foreword